My Disorder: Pop Culture Bulemia

I can't decide if this is good or bad news but my Us Weekly magazine subscription has expired as of December 31st. I got a year subscription on eBay last year for about $18 which was significantly cheaper than the $3.99 shelf price that screamed my name - "Aimee, Aimee, read me!" - in the check-out line at the grocery store. Somehow that little tabloid found its way across the scanner and into my bag with my fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs, Sweet's Brand cinnamon bears ... all the absolute necessities of life, right?

So I admit, I am a sucker for pop culture and I can't put my finger on exactly why. I don't even know these people yet I enjoy reading about their life in over 100 pages of details. Weekly. I completely despise the extreme paparazzi craziness that is inflicted on the stars yet here I am supporting the problem by subscribing to the source that is the spawn of satan (I do realize that some of the stars thrive on this so they are not included in my sympathy of course). I am an enabler to something I completely despise! How can I reconcile this within myself and stay true to my moral belief system?! How can I be a good, honorable citizen of the world but still love reading tabloid magazines? (I am not being factious here, I truly ask myself these questions while flipping through the pages.)

So here is a typical Friday for me (or was):
Drive home from wherever I have been in the day
Check the mail
See a popster staring me in the face on the cover of Us Weekly - hello, friend
A grin appears on my face: there is my reward for a hard working week
"What's the new drama of the week?" I ask myself
Drop my stuff I brought in from the car
Find a comfortable position on the king chair in the living room (it is my favorite place for reading)
Slowly open the first page...
Digest most every word in the entire magazine (I'm not just a picture looker, my friends - I read the words too. Sigh.)

And here's the kicker....
30-40 minutes later I throw the magazine down as I finish the last page where they show famous people all wearing the same trends like purses or hats or furry boots, and feel like I need to emotionally puke because I have binged on empty pop culture calories and my soul hurts out of lack of nutritious learning.

My Pop Culture Fascination Conclusions
Is the the lack of depth that makes me nauseous or the fact that I actually spent near an hour reading the useless information? Either way a conclusion that I have come up with is that I was born a sociologist/observationalist and getting to have that kind of microscope on a person's life slightly... ok really....intrigues me, even though I know I wasn't invited in by them personally (the non-invitation is the source of the guilt for me). Or maybe reading about their lives makes me feel better about my own? They may be unbelievably gorgeous and swimming in money but they've got their own set of problems too. Or possibly do I just need something light and trivial to take my mind off my own personal day-to-day crap? I don't really know the answer to this question. Maybe it is all of the above.

So, I was going to pose the question to you all as to whether or not you think I should renew my subscription but I think I have answered my own question by writing this post. It's not that I don't enjoy it, I mostly do, but when it comes down to it I just can't bring myself to renew it again. There will always be RRS feeds on People.com that don't make me want to throw up in the same way.

Needless to say, as a reward to a really hard week it may find its way - every once in a special while - across the scanner and into my bag at the grocery store.